After the games controversial Launch back in 2016 I do think that a lot of gamers at the time just assumed that the reason No Man’s Sky struggled so much at first was because hello games were such a small team that could not possibly deliver on all their many promises. There was also a widespread belief that once the bigger video game studios started making thier own space games it whould show just how out of their depth that hello games really was by taking on such an ambitious project in the first place.

Now after 7 years we can look back and realize that frankly it’s kind of a miracle that No Man’s Sky. even exist at all because other games that have attempted to do what No Man’s Sky did have not worked out so well

For example, Mass effect Andromeda was originally going to be very much like No Man’s Sky and yet the developers struggled so much with it that they decided to just abandon the idea in the middle of making the game.

Beyond Good and Evil 2 looks like it also tried to pull off no man sky on smaller scale but even they are having a tough time with the idea and it looks like the game ain’t never coming out

Star citizen is more successful compared to the others, but just like Beyond Good and Evil 2 that game still does not even have a release date and Even when it comes to a big triple A game like like Starfiled Todd Howard himself admitted just how difficult it would be to pull off the seamless planet landings that we see in a game like no man sky and that was a big reason why he ultimately decided not to include it in thier game

The reason I bring all this is up is simply to say that what the incredible team at hello games did was not easy at all and even game studios with much bigger teams and bigger budgets have a hard time because it is still insanely hard to make a space exploration game

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Note to Moderators: This post was approved in advance by spiper. Double check mod mail for confirmation.

What’s the problem?

Professor Cynical, a well-known NMS Youtuber, has recently released guides on how to grief in NMS. He’s doing this for ad revenue, and ignoring the chorus of civilized space voices – from the Galactic Hub, to UN42, to Ultimate Feud Company, to Interstellar Index – telling him that this video is a terrible idea.

This video is causing smaller civilizations to go completely private, hiding their locations from the public for fear of being griefed. Events which people worked for months on are being postponed, for fears that the event bases will be ruined due to this video. That sucks, and is against the spirit of the NMS community.

The Galactic Hub, however, will not be taking any such measures: I’ve gotten many malicious bases removed and a handful base griefers permanently banned from NMS. If anyone plays stupid games in our space, I’ll insure they win the appropriate stupid prizes.

If you are subscribed to his channel, the Galactic Hub would strongly encourage you to unsubscribe, so the community’s displeasure with his actions can be made clear.

Frequently Asked Questions / Clarification

• Isn’t he just telling people how to protect against griefers?

You can make a video saying “If there’s a griefing base on your base, click this button to report it” without also providing a step-by-step guide on how to actually grief someone.

In the past, Professor Cynical has also been responsible for instructing people on how to get your Minotaur into the Anomaly to kill people on Permadeath. There’s an established history to suggest he does not care about NMS or the community – he only cares about profiting off of the community.

• But what about his video specifically covering how to protect your base?

His second video claims to provide a method for “defending” your base. If he had actually spoken to any members of the community, instead of ignoring them while trying to profit off of them, anyone in civilized space could’ve told him this method doesn’t work.

He suggests putting bases around the outer boundaries of your base. Besides the fact that this is incredibly tedious, it betrays his poor understanding of multiplayer mechanics. Every player is only allowed to have 1 base per planet, unless you’re in a group / squad with people. Most griefers will not join your group before attempting to grief your base. Thus, his purported “defense” is entirely useless. He provided a step-by-step guide on how to grief, and a non-functional method to defend against that griefing.

• Isn’t this a good way to bring the problem to Hello Games’ attention?

No. Despite Professor Cynical presenting this as new information, this is a feature – not a bug – which has been used in cooperative projects in No Man’s Sky for at least 4 years.

However, people have occasionally used it for griefing on-and-off over those 4 years. Both myself and Hello Games were once featured in a Kotaku article covering controversy surrounding a repeat-offending base griefer. (Hello Games banned the griefer permanently.) Hello Games is clearly already aware of this feature, and the ways in which it’s sometimes misused – if they were willing or able to fix it, they presumably already would have done so.

In the last few years, HG has also been much better about responding to in-game base reports. There have even been cases where HG has removed a base in fewer than 24 hours.

We don’t want it ‘fixed’, because it’s used for good much more often than it’s used for bad. However, uploading it in the context of a step-by-step guide on how to “steal bases” increases the chances that it’s used for malicious purposes.

This is not “raising awareness” for anything. Everyone is already aware – except, potentially, the trolls which his videos are designed to cater to.

• Did anyone try asking him nicely first?

Yes. Representatives from many civilizations, including the famously-kind-and-tolerant Lillihop from NMSCafe / UN42, tried reaching out to him first. People tried, first nicely then firmly, to explain to him how his actions would cause harm.

He ignored everyone, blocking major community leaders from his channel despite them being generally civil in their opposition, and refusing to engage in any discussion about the topic.

According to him, his videos on Youtube are “real life efforts” and “many late nights of editing”. On the other hand, the bases he put at risk for a few cents in ad revenue – which people spend hours and hours on to create, which many people agree are (at least sometimes) a form of art, which people create for free just for the joy and for sharing – are just “pixels on a screen”. According to Professor Cynical, we’re all just “obsessed” for taking issue with his guide on ruining bases.

He then went on to complain about how people are trying to “cancel him” and “destroy his hard work”… in response to a video where he provided step-by-step instructions on how to destroy peoples’ hard work (bases).

If you ask me, that’s not called “cancel culture”, that’s called “the consequences of your actions.”